Scottish government awards £18.5m e-procurement support contract

Online procurement system has 50,000 registerd users

The Scottish government has awarded an £18.5 million contract to support its e-procurement service.

The Scottish government's eProcurement Scotland Service (ePS) will now be managed by Scottish IT services firm Amor Group. The four year contract will "deliver cost savings whilst significantly reducing carbon footprint levels", said the Scottish government.

The ePS system already has over 50,000 registered public sector users and captures almost one third of the procurement spend across the Scottish public sector. The ePS service allows purchases to be processed electronically from requisition to payment.

Amor has been tasked by the Scottish government to improve ePS' coverage, capability and compliance. A new virtual hosting environment will also deliver carbon savings, with the number of infrastructure servers reduced from 73 physical servers to 19 in the new configuration. "This represents a 75% reduction in the carbon footprint of the system which is equivalent to removing 200 vehicles from the road a year", said Amor.

Alex Neil, Scottish government cabinet secretary for infrastructure and capital investment, said: “The procurement exercise was highly competitive. It also showcases Scotland’s supplier capability to host and manage what is regarded as one of the leading government e-commerce services.”

The service will now be delivered by Amor from a range of locations across Scotland. The Scottish government’s Saughton House in Edinburgh will be the main hosting centre. User support services will be provided from an Amor location in Aberdeen, and integration and transition process support will be provided by another Amor site near Glasgow.

Earlier this year the Scottish government awarded a framework IT services contract worth up £270 million, which will support both its own departments and the wider Scottish public sector.

Suppliers including BT, Dell, Logica, Fujitsu Services, Atos Origin, Kainos Software, and Capita Business Services have been selected to deliver portions of the contract.